Hello from Florida Tech!

As we begin gearing up for our 2015 Antarctic SeaScience Expedition, we want to keep you all updated as to what we have been up to since our last cruise. 

For those of you that have not seen our blog before, we are currently researching the ecology of king crabs in the Antarctic.  The Antarctic marine environment is warming at a faster rate than almost anywhere else on the planet.  As water temperatures rise king crabs seem to be moving into new environments, where they are likely to have a negative impact on the native communities.  We have led two cruises to the Antarctic to study the king crabs, using an underwater camera to collect images at depths between 400 and 1500 meters. 

With the help of a team of undergraduate students, we spent the summer analyzing images that we collected during our cruise in 2013.  We have gathered lots of interesting information from the area we visited last year.  As well as sighting many king crabs, we have observed many unique and beautiful animals in their natural environment.  These include octopods, corals, anemones and brittle stars.  We even found a whale fall down there!  When a whale dies, it falls to the seafloor where it provides food and habitat for other animals for 50 years or more.  To learn more about the whale fall we saw, you can read our published journal article about it: Discovery of a whale fall on the continental slope of the western Antarctic Peninsula

Next month we will be embarking on our third expedition to continue our analysis of the remote seafloor environment off the western Antarctic Peninsula.  You can also follow along on our Antarctic SeaScience Expedition by visiting our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts!

Directly from the Antarctic seafloor, here are a few of the images from last year!

A yellow stalked crinoid (top) and lots of brittle stars!

Octocorals on a rock

Anemone

Dumbo octopus!